TAMPA | A judge ruled Monday that jurors can hear recorded statements of Dorice "DeeDee" Moore when she goes on trial next week in the slaying of Lakeland lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare.

By JASON GEARYTHE LEDGER

TAMPA | A judge ruled Monday that jurors can hear recorded statements of Dorice "DeeDee" Moore when she goes on trial next week in the slaying of Lakeland lottery winner Abraham Shakespeare.

During a hearing that stretched into the night, Circuit Judge Emmett Lamar Battles listened to about six hours of recordings made by detectives pressing Moore to explain who fatally shot Shakespeare and buried him underneath a concrete slab.

The judge also ruled Monday that Moore, 40, is mentally fit to stand trial. Her lawyers had questioned whether she was incompetent to stand trial.

Moore's lawyers argued detectives coerced her into talking to them by threatening to lock up her ex-husband for digging the hole where Shakespeare was buried. Moore insisted throughout her discussions with detectives that her ex-husband didn't know what the hole would be used for, and other people were responsible for Shakespeare's killing.

"I'm telling you the truth, and you don't want to listen," Moore pleaded with detectives in one recorded interview.

She said she was scared that the real killer would harm her and her family. "I'm going to jail for something I didn't do," she told detectives.

Detectives from the Hillsborough and Polk County sheriff's offices testified that Moore repeatedly spoke to them of her own free will and voluntarily contacted them numerous times. They said they confronted her when her stories conflicted.

Prosecutors argued Moore throughout the investigation repeatedly changed her story in an unsuccessful attempt to manipulate detectives and cast suspicion away from her.

The judge concluded Moore voluntarily spoke to detectives, and jurors could hear the recordings.

Detectives testified Moore has given different accounts of who killed Shakespeare. Polk sheriff's Detective David Wallace said the common thread in each story was that Moore was present when the shooting took place, but she denied pulling the trigger.

"It was always someone else," Wallace said.

Shakespeare won a $17 million lump-sum lottery payment in 2006. He was last seen alive in April 2009.

Investigators concluded Moore befriended Shakespeare under the guise of writing a book about him, seized control of his remaining fortune and then killed him, according to an affidavit from a joint investigation by the sheriff's offices of Polk and Hillsborough.

Shakespeare's body was found Jan. 28, 2010, buried behind a Plant City home. He had been shot twice in the chest.

Moore, of Lakeland, is accused of first-degree murder. It's estimated her trial will last about 10 days.